Dry weather sparks fires in Townsend, Lowell

Townsend and Lowell are among the communities reporting brush fires since Sunday.

Lowell battled a brush fire behind 1705 Middlesex St., Monday night about 7:30. The blaze was near railroad tracks that run parallel with Middlesex Street.

On Sunday, Townsend firefighters had brush fires reported on Emory Road at 11:10 a.m., and then on Townsend Hill Road 25 minutes later. Both fires were started by residents with permits from the department to burn vegetation.

"Both of them were failure to attend to their fires that got away from them," Townsend fire Chief Donald Klein said. "The problem now is, the surface is dry, and if you are not (attentive to) the fires, they tend to get away."

Klein had firefighters and equipment committed to a controlled burn of underbrush at Townsend State Forest at the time, so he was unable to send help to Fitchburg when it had a three-alarm garage fire on Lunenburg Street.

April has been a dry month, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Alan Dunham. And it doesn't look as if the start of May will be much different.

"Really, we're not looking for anything in the way of rainfall pretty much through the weekend," Dunham said.

The average monthly rainfall at the National Weather Service monitoring station in Worcester is 3.85 inches, but there has only been 1.8 inches so far this month, a 2.05-inch deficit, he said.

For this time of year, average rainfall is 14.

Advertisement

78 inches, and the region has gotten 12.36 inches, indicating that most of the deficit has been in April.

Some communities will allow permitted burns through Wednesday, using rules set by the state Department of Environmental Protection that are administered by fire chiefs.

Fire chiefs have discretion to refuse permits during the burning season but didn't have to do it often this year due to the long winter.

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sun. So keep it civil.